Khoj

Hybrid (offline or cloud)

Self-hosted AI assistant for your notes, emails, docs. Web + mobile + desktop, all local-first.

Editorial verdict: “Best 'AI second brain' app. Self-hosted, local-first, works against Obsidian.

RAG app
Freemium
AGPL-3.0
4.3 / 5
GitHub ★ 18,000

Compatibility at a glance

Which runtime + OS combos this app works against. Source of truth for "will it run on my setup?"

§ Runtimes supported
ollamallama-cppopenai-compatanthropic
§ OS / platform
linuxmacoswindowsiosandroidweb
§ Hardware + model hint
Minimum VRAM
8 GB
Recommended starter model
Llama 3.1 8B Q4_K_M

What it is

Khoj is a self-hosted AI second-brain. Indexes your notes (Obsidian, Org-mode, Markdown), emails, browser history, PDFs — then chat with it. Local-first: runs against Ollama or llama.cpp by default, falls back to cloud only if you opt in. Cross-platform (web, iOS, Android, desktop). Niche but well-executed.

✓ Strengths

  • +Genuinely cross-platform (mobile apps work)
  • +Strong Obsidian integration
  • +Self-host + cloud sync is well-designed

△ Caveats

  • Initial index of a large corpus is slow
  • Some niche features (image generation) require cloud